Love really good popcorn, but don’t want to take the time to make it the old-fashioned way? Use sprouted corn kernels in place of conventional popping corn, and you can achieve popcorn perfection with the convenience of your microwave.

Earlier this week we introduced you to Peggy Sutton, founder and owner of the To Your Health Sprouted Flour Co. in Fitzpatrick, Alabama. Ten years ago Peggy started sprouting and grinding whole grains in her kitchen. Today she runs three large production facilities that produce over 3 million pounds of sprouted grains every year, with every batch of flour still ground fresh to order.

We visited one of the To Your Health facilities a few weeks ago for a step-by-step look at the production process. It all starts with the grain — specifically, 25 different kinds of non-GMO, kosher, organic grains.

Right this moment in rural Alabama, a little company called To Your Health Sprouted Flour Co. is on track to produce three million pounds of 100-percent organic, whole-grain sprouted flour this year.

If that sounds impressive, it's even more amazing when you consider that it all started when owner, Peggy Sutton, took to sprouting grains in her home kitchen, and from there a business was born. Here's how it happened.

This year, we continued our efforts to go around the world and learn where foods come from. We saw how authentic fish sauce gets made in a tiny Vietnamese village. We experienced an Alabama peanut harvest firsthand. We watched maple sap boil down into syrup in a hut in Vermont. We petted the cows in Jura, France, that produce the milk that makes Comté cheese.

And we didn't stop at food, either — we also went to the Lodge factory in Tennessee to learn how our beloved cast iron skillets are made. Here are the 10 ways we learned more about food this year.